The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Death, Art, and the Disturbing: Hemingway and Mailer and the Art of Writing: Difference between revisions
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Writers, as Hemingway and Mailer suggest, have a responsibility to their art, their“working morale,”and their readers to try to get to the core of experience and show readers how to see self, world, life, and even art more clearly, honestly, and truly—without illusions (Mailer, “Hazards” 399). In fact, in the opening pages of ''Death in the Afternoon'', Hemingway urges readers to rely on their own “experience and observation,” to “only feel those things they actually feel and not the things they think they should feel” (5, 10), to feel “what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel” (2), to create their own standards—both moral and aesthetic—and come to see the bullfight (and correlatively life, death, and art) more “clearly” and as a “whole”(4, 8–9). Significantly, Hemingway’s focus on the writer’s purpose as clarifying Americans’ vision of self and world is Mailer’s stated artistic purpose as well.In ''Cannibals and Christians'', Mailer succinctly states this Hemingwayesque philosophy in his claim that the highest purpose of literature is“to clarify a nation’s vision of itself” (98). Mailer writes, | Writers, as Hemingway and Mailer suggest, have a responsibility to their art, their“working morale,”and their readers to try to get to the core of experience and show readers how to see self, world, life, and even art more clearly, honestly, and truly—without illusions (Mailer, “Hazards” 399). In fact, in the opening pages of ''Death in the Afternoon'', Hemingway urges readers to rely on their own “experience and observation,” to “only feel those things they actually feel and not the things they think they should feel” (5, 10), to feel “what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel” (2), to create their own standards—both moral and aesthetic—and come to see the bullfight (and correlatively life, death, and art) more “clearly” and as a “whole”(4, 8–9). Significantly, Hemingway’s focus on the writer’s purpose as clarifying Americans’ vision of self and world is Mailer’s stated artistic purpose as well.In ''Cannibals and Christians'', Mailer succinctly states this Hemingwayesque philosophy in his claim that the highest purpose of literature is“to clarify a nation’s vision of itself” (98). Mailer writes, | ||
{{quote|It is, I believe, the highest function a writer may serve, to see life (no matter by what means or form or experiment) as others do not see it, or only partially see it, and therefore open for the reader that literary experience which comes uniquely from the novel—the sense of having one’s perceptions deepened, and one’s illusions about oneself rendered even more untenable. For me, this is the highest function of art, precisely that it is disturbing, that it does not let man rest,and therefore forces him so far as art may force anything to enlarge the horizons of his life. (qtd. in Foster 40)}} | {{quote|It is, I believe, the highest function a writer may serve, to see life (no matter by what means or form or experiment) as others do not see it, or only partially see it, and therefore open for the reader that literary experience which comes uniquely from the novel—the sense of having one’s perceptions deepened, and one’s illusions about oneself rendered even more untenable. For me, this is the highest function of art, precisely that it is disturbing, that it does not let man rest,and therefore forces him so far as art may force anything to enlarge the horizons of his life. (qtd. in Foster 40)}} | ||
Both Hemingway and Mailer’s goal of clarifying “a nation’s vision of itself” is consciously focused on capturing and conveying real emotion and experience that shakes readers out of their normal ways of thinking and being. This, according to Hemingway and Mailer, opens readers to differing perspectives, forces them to be honest with themselves,and helps them to break all illusions of self and world (Mailer, ''Cannibals'' 98). Yet this philosophy of writing in which the author takes responsibility for enlarging readers’“horizons” through presenting life honestly,“as it really is” (Hemingway,“Letter to John” 354), is not exclusively bound to Hemingway or Mailer’s own, self-developed philosophy of writing and art. | Both Hemingway and Mailer’s goal of clarifying “a nation’s vision of itself” is consciously focused on capturing and conveying real emotion and experience that shakes readers out of their normal ways of thinking and being. This, according to Hemingway and Mailer, opens readers to differing perspectives, forces them to be honest with themselves,and helps them to break all illusions of self and world (Mailer, ''Cannibals'' 98). Yet this philosophy of writing in which the author takes responsibility for enlarging readers’“horizons” through presenting life honestly,“as it really is” (Hemingway, “Letter to John” 354), is not exclusively bound to Hemingway or Mailer’s own, self-developed philosophy of writing and art. | ||
Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their artistic striving to make, as Mailer puts it,“a revolution in the consciousness of our time,”is founded in existential notions of creating art and becoming an artist (''Advertisements'' 17). For existentialists, to become an artist, an individual must break through all illusions, see self and world more clearly, get to the core or “root” of life, and thus see life “as it really is” (Hemingway,“Letter to John” | Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their artistic striving to make, as Mailer puts it,“a revolution in the consciousness of our time,”is founded in existential notions of creating art and becoming an artist (''Advertisements'' 17). For existentialists, to become an artist, an individual must break through all illusions, see self and world more clearly, get to the core or “root” of life, and thus see life “as it really is” (Hemingway,“Letter to John” 354).The catalyst for this perceptual shift, according to existentialists, is profound emotional experience. Specifically, the existentialists’ study of the intense emotional experience that accompanies facing death, an experience that shakes individuals out of their normal ways of being, seeing, feeling, and thinking, is an essential part of their philosophy of creating art and becoming an artist. | ||
According to the existentialists, it is through the study of death that individuals recognize the importance of seeing life “clearly” and as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death , ) and come to understand the urgent necessity, as Hemingway puts it,of making“something of his own,”of creating“art”and becoming “artist” () or “author” of one’s own life, meaning, structure, content, and commitments (Yalom –). The study of death reveals to individuals, according to existential scholar Charles Guignon, the importance of seeing their lives as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death ) and the importance of“creating their lives as‘works of art’”(Guignon xxxv).Significantly, the profound emotional experience that brings individuals to see their lives as a “whole” is bound to the realization that the structure of human nature is a synthesis between the temporal and the eternal—what Hemingway refers to as “the feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality” (Hemingway, Death )—in which the individual moments of one’s life (the temporal or parts) require an overarching unity or meaning (the eternal or whole) to give authentic meaning to one’s life and/or work ().It is through facing up to one’s own certain death—and the uncertain hour and day of one’s death—that the individual comes to the realization that he/she is responsible for creating his/her life and work as art by expressing the eternal in his/her nature, something Hemingway envisions as the enduring emotional experience of the bullfight, something he strives to convey through his writing and an essential aspect of his existential-oriented philosophy of creating art.This existential focus on the study of death,the realization of the temporal and eternal nature of human existence, and the profound emotional experiences that bring individuals to the realization that they must express the eternal in their nature form the basis of both Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their goals as writer-artists. | According to the existentialists, it is through the study of death that individuals recognize the importance of seeing life “clearly” and as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death , ) and come to understand the urgent necessity, as Hemingway puts it,of making“something of his own,”of creating“art”and becoming “artist” () or “author” of one’s own life, meaning, structure, content, and commitments (Yalom –). The study of death reveals to individuals, according to existential scholar Charles Guignon, the importance of seeing their lives as a “whole” (Hemingway, Death ) and the importance of“creating their lives as‘works of art’”(Guignon xxxv).Significantly, the profound emotional experience that brings individuals to see their lives as a “whole” is bound to the realization that the structure of human nature is a synthesis between the temporal and the eternal—what Hemingway refers to as “the feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality” (Hemingway, Death )—in which the individual moments of one’s life (the temporal or parts) require an overarching unity or meaning (the eternal or whole) to give authentic meaning to one’s life and/or work ().It is through facing up to one’s own certain death—and the uncertain hour and day of one’s death—that the individual comes to the realization that he/she is responsible for creating his/her life and work as art by expressing the eternal in his/her nature, something Hemingway envisions as the enduring emotional experience of the bullfight, something he strives to convey through his writing and an essential aspect of his existential-oriented philosophy of creating art.This existential focus on the study of death,the realization of the temporal and eternal nature of human existence, and the profound emotional experiences that bring individuals to the realization that they must express the eternal in their nature form the basis of both Hemingway and Mailer’s philosophy of writing and their goals as writer-artists. | ||
HEMINGWAY AND MAILER: THE ART OF WRITING EXISTENTIALLY | HEMINGWAY AND MAILER: THE ART OF WRITING EXISTENTIALLY | ||